Refugee Week 2026 - A Million Stories
- Jun 19
- 6 min read
No child chooses to leave
No child chooses to leave their home. They don’t weigh up options. They don’t make plans.
They go because staying is no longer safe. For Rohingya children and young people, that moment has been repeated across years, sometimes across generations. What looks like a single journey is often a long stretch of movement, uncertainty, and waiting.
This Refugee Week, we are reflecting on those journeys, and on what it means when young people arrive in our care carrying them. This year, that reflection feels especially close. On 11 June 2026, five young people entered our Unaccompanied Humanitarian Minors (UHM) program, with two more expected to arrive in the ACT on 20 July 2026.
These seven young people are now part of our community, and their stories remind us why this work matters.
Why Rohingya families have had to leave
The Rohingya are the Indigenous people of Western Burma, now known as Myanmar. A Muslim minority who, for decades, have been denied citizenship. They have not been recognised as belonging in the country where they have lived for generations. That has shaped everything else: restrictions on where they can live, travel, study, or access medical care.
In 2017, that long pattern of exclusion turned into something even more violent.
Myanmar’s military carried out coordinated attacks on Rohingya communities. Villages were burned. Families were separated. People were killed. Women and girls were subjected to sexual violence.
The United Nations has described it as ethnic cleansing. It’s important to say this plainly: people did not leave because they wanted a better opportunity somewhere else. They left because they were being driven out.
What comes after leaving
Leaving Myanmar is not the end of the story. For many Rohingya families, it is the beginning of another kind of uncertainty. Along the Thai–Burma border and across the region, people live in fragile and often invisible conditions. Some are in camps. Others move between informal settlements or border areas. Many do not have legal status.
For young people, that can look like:
Confusion with moving without much notice
Fear and uncertainty as adults around them try to work out what comes next
Denied access to schooling
Anxiety not knowing how long “temporary” will last
There’s a kind of waiting that sits underneath all of this.
Waiting for permission. Waiting for safety. Waiting for something to change.
And for children, that waiting becomes part of growing up.
The journeys of the young people who arrived this month
The five young people who arrived on 11 June were all born in Rakhine State. They are Rohingya Muslims who were granted refuge by UNHCR and processed for entry into Australia due to the significant risks they faced as unaccompanied minors.
Some of these young people have been detained for more than three years. Their reasons for detention vary, many were stopped while crossing into Malaysia, all without legal guardians, and all vulnerable to harm in detention environments not designed for children.
Their arrival in Australia marks the end of one chapter of uncertainty, but the beginning of another: rebuilding safety, identity, and belonging.
How Marist180 prepared for their arrival
Preparing for the arrival of these young people required careful planning, coordination, and a whole-of-team effort.
We sourced and furnished a property to ensure they had a stable, welcoming home from day one. We recruited and matched staff, prioritising cultural and bilingual capability, to ensure communication, trust, and cultural understanding could begin immediately.
Our Therapeutic Advisors used the limited information available to develop behavioural support plans and matching documents, helping us anticipate needs and provide consistent, trauma-informed care.
This preparation wasn’t just logistical. It was relational. It was about ensuring that when these young people stepped off the plane, they stepped into a place ready to hold them.
Their first days in Australia
The first days have been overwhelming for them, understandably so. After years in detention, the contrast is stark.
They sleep together in the same room on mattresses, seeking comfort in proximity. They want to stay close to one another at all times. They need time to understand that this new environment is safe, predictable, and theirs.
We have taken them shopping for clothing and items to personalise their rooms, but mostly we are giving them space. Calm reassurance. Gentle presence. Less is more.
What being a safe place really means
We talk a lot about being a “safe place,” but in practice it’s quite simple, and quite hard.
It’s about what happens every day. It’s knowing where you’re going to sleep. It’s not having to move suddenly. It’s having adults around you who mean what they say.
It’s being able to go to school and keep going. It’s being asked what you think. It’s being recognised for who you are, not just what you’ve been through.
For young people who have experienced long periods of instability, these things are not small. They are what safety looks like.
In our UHM team, that shows up through:
consistent homes and routines
relationships that take time, and aren’t rushed
support to navigate school, health care and everyday systems
attention to culture, identity and belonging
space for young people to make decisions about their own lives
It’s not about “fixing” anything. It’s about putting the basics in place so that something else can begin.
The support we are providing right now
In the first seven days, our priority is medical care and schooling.
Each young person receives full medical assessments and the development of individual health plans. School enrolments are completed quickly, with all young people beginning school within a week of arrival. They are placed into ESL programs, where English learning is the foundation for everything else.
Emotionally, we focus on presence, predictability, and cultural sensitivity, helping them feel that they belong in their new home.
Our ongoing plan for the coming weeks and months
Our work continues long after the first week.
We are supporting:
ongoing medical care and follow-up
school engagement and learning support
opportunities to explore Sydney and understand their new community
connection with the local mosque
building a sense of safety, identity, and belonging
This is the slow, steady work of settlement—helping young people move from surviving to imagining a future.
What changes when safety is real
You don’t always see the shift straight away.
But over time, it shows up.
A young person starts planning for next term instead of next week. They stay in school. They build friendships. They begin to imagine something beyond just getting through.
What made this response possible
Our partnership with DOHA has been central. Their confidence in our ability to provide specialised support meant that all seven young people arriving in this intake were allocated to Marist180. No referrals or refugees have been processed since 2023, making this a significant moment.
Our strong relationships with community organisations, local mosques, schools, and medical centres also make this work possible. Settlement is never done alone, it is always a collective effort.
What the community may be surprised to learn
Many people are shocked to learn that children as young as 11 are detained in refugee camps without parents or caregivers. Globally, 47 million children are forcibly displaced, with hundreds of thousands unaccompanied or separated.
And yet, the resilience these young people carry is extraordinary. With the right support and care, they will become valued members of our community, young people who understand, through lived experience, what it means to rebuild a life and how precious safety truly is.
Why this matters
Refugee Week gives us a moment to step back and pay attention.
Not just to the journeys people make, but to why they have to make them, and what happens when they arrive.
The situation facing the Rohingya people has not been resolved. Ethnic cleansing and displacement continues. Rights continue to be denied. Untold violence continues.
So the question is not whether this matters to us.
It’s how we respond.
At its core, this is about human dignity.
Every person has the right to live in safety, to belong, and to build a life without fear of being forced from their home.
The young people who have come into our care are not defined by what has happened to them. They are still working out who they are, what they want, and what their future might hold, just like any other young person.
Our role is to make sure they have the chance to do that in a place that is safe, steady, and respectful. Because no child should have to leave home to be safe. And when they do, the least we can do is make sure that when they arrive, they find somewhere they can finally settle.
